Cormac Mccarthy The Road Essay

Finding Love In Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, the protagonists, an unnamed man and son, travel a “Barren, silent. godless road during an apocalypse where the world is devoid of hope and civilization. The father and the boy navigate through the “soft ash” (4) with hopes of making it to the South for better living conditions where it will be “warm at last” (147). During their dangerous journey, the man and the boy encounter several experiences, such as worrying about warmth, “always food” (17), and coming across dead human bodies as a result of wicked cannibals, resulting in trauma and moral degeneration in the man and his son. Throughout the novel, the unbreakable bond between the father and his son is continually present in which McCarthy illustrates the theme of the …show more content…
As the novel progresses, while the man and the boy are sleeping, they hear the sounds of a diesel truck forcing them to wake up and run to get out of sight. Once they've managed to hide, they can hear the guys conversing until they hear "one of their number unbuckling his belt" (62), leaving the father and boy terrified. The father stays calm and confident when he talks to the man about who he is and what his group is doing there. McCarthy utilizes the father’s composed reaction to a frightening situation to enhance the theme of the father trying his best to keep the boy from worrying about their lives. After the man and the father’s conversation transferred into more of an argument, the man took action to prove himself a threat as he “grabbed the boy” (66) and held “the knife at his throat” (66). As soon as the father sees that his son has become in danger, he springs into action to keep his child out of death’s